


syrinx

by starlight_sugar



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 02:41:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8693188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: Faith is a tricky thing. Merle might not have it, but he'll make sure his daughter does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work by a fan for fans, not affiliated with MaxFun or the McElroys.  
> Canon notes: spoilers up through Lunar Interlude IV; probably not canon-compliant as of revelations from Stolen Century  
> Content warnings: references to canonical loss of limb
> 
> In mythology, Syrinx is a nymph who was pursued by the god Pan. She asked for the river nymphs to help her, and they transformed her into hollow reeds at the river's bank. Pan didn't realize that she'd been transformed and cut the reeds down to form a pipe flute, where he played [a song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw53VrbI4l0) for his lost love.

For her fourth birthday, Merle gives Mavis a necklace with a small pan flute on it. Technically, he’s a couple years late with that - he doesn’t even remember when he got his first pan flute, he was so young, and he broke tradition by holding off on hers for so long - but from the way Mavis’s face lights up when she sees it, she doesn’t care. She grabs it out of his hands and turns it over, chubby fingers running across the miniature pipes. “Can I play it?” she asks.

Merle chuckles. “No, your mom would kill me if I gave you something that made noise. It’s a necklace, sweetie, let me put it on you.”

Mavis hands it back to him, eyes shining. Merle slides the necklace down her head until the flute rests between her collarbones. She’s still gazing at him, radiating awe and love and something too deep and real to fathom.

Sometimes, when she looks at him like that, like he hung the stars in the sky and could pull them down for her, Merle thinks he wasn’t cut out for this. He’s not sure what this is, exactly. Parenthood, probably. This isn’t the future he imagined for himself, but it’s the future he’s in, and he loves his daughter. He does.

“What’s it for, Daddy?” Mavis asks as soon as he steps back.

“Well,” Merle says, and something guilty clenches in his chest. He believes in Pan, just as loosely as he has for decades now, which means that everything about this is fuzzy. But it was important to him when he was a kid. Maybe he should make it important to her, too. “It’s a pan flute, it was made by the nature god Pan.”

“Why’d he make it?”

“Because he was sad, and he wanted to make music. So he cut down some reeds and made a flute, and now we use the flute to honor him.”

“Why do we honor him?”

“Because…” Merle pauses. “Because some people think he’s powerful and strong, and they want to respect him.”

Mavis turns the flute over in her hands, once, twice, untwists the necklace cord. “Do you think that, Daddy?”

“Of course, pumpkin,” Merle says. Lies, really, but who’s keeping track? Half of parenthood is lying anyways, and he’s been lying about religion for most of his life.

#

He takes Mavis to Pan service - not every weekend, not every month, but every time she asks to go. He makes sure she’s dressed up, bows in hair and necklace firmly around her neck, but he always feels out of place there. They keep changing the words to the damn prayers, the ones that Merle’s known since he was Mavis’s age. It makes him look like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, which is true, but he’d appreciate if the church didn’t make him look like an idiot.

“Is Mookie gonna get a flute?” Mavis asks him, a couple of months before Mookie turns three.

“No, sweetie, he wouldn’t really appreciate it,” Merle says vaguely.

“Why not?”

“Because he doesn’t know anything about Pan or what the flute means.”

“Neither did I,” Mavis points out. “I still don’t. I don’t know what Pan does.”

“He’s the nature god.”

Mavis scrunches her nose up at him. She’s six now, too smart for her own good, and it’s getting harder and harder to look her in the eye. He thinks she knows that he’s not happy here. He thinks she might know what he’s planning.

“I know he’s the nature god,” Mavis announces, in the most _duh, Dad_ tone of voice he’s ever heard. “But I don’t know what that means. Mom says there are a lot of gods out there, what makes Pan special?”

“I was raised in a Pan family,” Merle answers. “And I wanted to pass that on to you, if I could.”

Mavis blinks. “I didn’t know that.”

“I don’t talk about it,” Merle says. “My parents were very harsh on me with all the Pan stuff, especially my dad, and I don’t want to be that hard on you. I want you to be able to pick for yourself, without me forcing you.”

“Oh,” Mavis says softly. “Without you.”

Merle’s heart clenches, but he does his best not to show his hand. “And only pick Pan if you want to,” he adds. “If you decide you’re really into atheism, or you want to serve a god of cooking or something, that’s fine too.”

“I can’t cook, Dad,” Mavis chides him, although there’s a smile spreading across her face.

“Well, your cooking god could teach you, couldn’t he?”

“ _Da-ad,_ ” Mavis says, but she giggles as she says it.

“What, couldn’t he?”

“Gods have better things to do than teach kids to cook!”

“Well, then that’s a crummy god,” Merle says resolutely. And he thinks about Pan service, two days a week and twice on Sundays, praying every single night of his teenage years for proof that Pan was real, not really praying too often after that. “A real god’ll help you out any way he can.”

“Any way he can,” Mavis repeats, and Merle wonders if he’s not making the same mistakes his dad did.

#

Instead of a letter, he leaves Mookie a pan flute and Mavis a prayer book. The way Merle sees it, after this his kids are either going to be devout followers or hate everything to do with Pan, and either way is fine by him.

And he’s fine, really, he’s leaving and he’s known for months that he would, but his throat is tight when he sets Mavis’s book on her bed.

He closes his eyes. “Take care of them,” he says, voice barely a whisper but it still hurts to speak. He waits for a few seconds, and it’s like he’s sixteen all over again. All he needs is proof, all he needs is a sign that he’s not leaving his kids completely alone.

Nothing happens. Merle leaves anyways.

#

The next three years of Merle’s life take him as far from Neverwinter as he can manage. He tries everything: he learns to sail, he learns to fight, he learns to heal. He learns to ride a horse, which is a shitty adventure in and of itself, but he comes away saddle-sore and a little stronger for it.

He never writes home, although he thinks about it sometimes. He never prays, except on Mavis and Mookie’s birthdays, because his kids deserve that much from him. Even if Pan isn’t real, they deserve more on those days than just “huh, hope they’re okay.”

It takes him three years to gather the courage to go back to Neverwinter, and it’s just for a day - just a few hours, all he has the time and energy to manage.

Hecuba looks unimpressed when she opens the door and sees him there. “Got tired of being gone?” she says, completely impassive.

“I’m not staying.” Merle stuffs his hands in his pockets and forces himself to meet her eyes. “I just wanted to see them.”

Hecuba leans against the doorframe. “Mookie doesn’t remember you.”

It feels like he’s drowning - which is something he’s had experience with now, actually, and he thinks that was a damn sight better than the way he feels now - but he manages to take a breath. “He was young when I left.”

“So was Mavis. She doesn’t remember you fondly.”

“I’m not asking them to love me,” Merle says. “Or even to like me. I just want to see them.”

“Do you think it’s fair to them to show up for one day and then fuck off again for four years?”

“No,” Merle answers truthfully. “I’m being selfish.”

Hecuba sighs. “At least you know,” she says, and moves out of the way. “The minute one of them says to leave, you get out of my damn house.”

 _It used to be our house,_ Merle almost says. Instead he swallows his pride. “Thank you.”

“And if you’re going to do this, you need to come back more,” Hecuba adds, before he can move. “Every few months, at least. They’re kids, Merle, you don’t get to mess with kids.”

“I won’t,” he promises without thinking. It’s the easiest promise he’s ever made. “I’ll come back.”

“Good. Because if you don’t-” she leans in, jaw set tight. “I will run you through with a broadsword.”

“And you’ll enjoy it, too,” Merle says as sardonically as he can manage. “C’mon, Hec.”

Hecuba takes a step back, then another. “Don’t give me an excuse to kill you,” she says, and it’s all Merle can do to keep from charging up the stairs to his kids. His _kids._

He hears Mavis before he sees her, soft voice coming from her bedroom. He recognizes the words as he stops at the top of the stairs, and his breath catches in his chest.

“Make me steadfast as I venture into your world,” she murmurs. Merle inches around the corner to see her kneeling beside her bed, a small candle in front of her. “Lift my worriment with your melodies.”

Mookie sees him first, bouncing on Mavis’s bed. He stops when he catches sight of Merle, and his eyebrows furrow in confusion. There’s no recognition there. He’s bigger than Merle remembered. The color of his eyes is different, just a shade away from what Merle thought it was.

“Uh, Mavey?” Mookie says.

Mavis doesn’t open her eyes, just shoves a hand at Mookie’s general direction. She hits his knee and quickly rests her hand back on her lap. Mookie falls quiet, but he still stares at Merle.

“As I walk with thee, I walk with strength I never knew,” Mavis intones, and Merle can feel the tears welling up in his eyes. He never said his prayers without someone making him do it. Looks like his girl grew up right.

“Hail Pan,” Mavis finishes, and blows out the candle.

Merle looks away. “Hail Pan,” he repeats softly.

There’s a noise, like Mavis moved, and when he looks back she has her back pressed against her bed, eyes wide, mouth open in shock. The pan flute is on a new cord now, darker leather, but it’s the same one that he got her when she was a kid.

“Mavis, who’s that?” Mookie grabs a fistful of Mavis’s hair and pulls lightly. “Do I know him? I think I know him.”

Mavis swallows. “Dad,” she says coolly, and Merle should apologize, should say something, should do _anything._ He should try and fix this.

“Hi, sweetie,” Merle says, and he decides then and there that he will fix this. He has to fix this. “I’m home.”

#

Mavis teaches him the new prayers, when he visits. It’s the one thing he can get her to talk about, even though she doesn’t talk about anything else for the first few visits. He’ll take what he can get, and there’s something beautiful about watching his daughter’s careful reverence when she lights candles, the way she’s patient when he stumbles over the words to the invocations and hymns.

“I used to think if I prayed hard enough, you’d come home,” she tells him on his fifth visit, voice tight. “And then when I gave up on that, I kept praying, because I liked the way it felt.”

“I’m glad you found that, honey,” Merle says softly. “I am.”

“You said that you believed in Pan.” Mavis fiddles with her necklace. “When I was a kid.”

“I did say that.”

“Were you lying?”

Merle sighs. “That’s a loaded question, Mavey.”

“It’s really not,” she says, voice going sharp. “Did you lie?”

“I believe in Pan the same way I believe that somewhere out there there’s a perfect apple pie recipe and that one day we’re gonna send someone to space.”

“What does that mean?”

Merle tips his head back and looks at the sky. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“That’s not really faith,” Mavis chides him gently.

Merle chuckles. “Sweetie, I haven’t had faith in a long time.”

#

His next adventure takes him to the moon. He can honestly say he didn’t see that one coming.

 _One day we’re gonna send someone to space,_ he thinks, and wonders if maybe there’s something to this whole religion thing after all.

#

Mavis cries the first time she sees his wooden arm. And not the quiet leaking-a-few-tears way that he’s seen her cry before, but full-on sobbing. The kind of thing that makes Merle want to look away before he starts sobbing himself.

“Can it catch on fire?” Mookie asks. He’s holding his sister’s hand as she cries, but he’s completely transfixed by the arm.

“Yeah, it can,” Merle says, and winces when Mavis doubles over even farther. “Listen, these things happen to adventurers all the time! Most of them don’t get another arm, this is the best case scenario.”

“I think it’s cool,” Mookie announces. “You’re a cool dad.”

“You’re a lucky dad,” Mavis says. Her voice is thick, and when she looks up her eyes are red. The hand that isn’t tangled with Mookie’s is firmly clutching her necklace. “You could’ve died.”

“But I’m here,” Merle says. He wishes he could tell the kids more, about how Magnus saved his life even if Merle’s down an arm now, about how he saved the world. But he figures the most he can tell them is this. “I’m here. And Pan gave me a new arm.”

Mavis sniffles. “You think it was Pan?”

“Sweetie, I know it was Pan.” He reaches out towards her with the wooden arm, and something green begins to sprout on his forearm, near his wrist. Mavis and Mookie both stare, and he smiles. “Go ahead.”

Slowly, Mavis lets go of her pendant and grabs the wooden arm. “It feels like a hand,” she says, with that same wondrous, amazed tone of voice that used to be reserved for Merle. He’s glad that it’s reserved for Pan now. Out of the two of them, he knows who deserves it more.

“It is my hand.” Merle squeezes her hand, and Mavis’s breath hitches, and he thinks that even if he doesn’t deserve this miracle, she does. She deserves to see that her prayers can be answered. “Pan gave me a new arm.”

“Whoa,” Mookie whispers, reaching out to grab Merle’s wrist.

Mavis meets his eyes. There are tears still streaking down her cheeks, but she manages a smile. “Maybe you’ll find that perfect apple pie recipe after all.”

Merle laughs, and he isn’t surprised at all to hear that he’s a little choked up too. “Yeah,” he says, and there’s so much more he wants to say. Instead, he just holds his daughter’s hand.

**Author's Note:**

> Mavis's prayer is [an actual prayer to Pan,](http://panoleptos.com/?page_id=623) for the record. And as always you can find me on Twitter @jazfiute and on Tumblr @pervincetosscobble. Thanks for reading!


End file.
